Central Arnhem Highway

We were up early the morning we were heading up to Nhulunbuy we had a lot of driving to do to get us there in time for the start of the Garma Festival. The roads were not too bad, very corrugated and very dusty, red bull dust, if you have ever encountered red bulldust you will know the go but if not, it is very fine red dirt and fills holes and makes it look like there is no hole but you certainly know about it if you hit one. It did not take too long to identify these bull dust filled holes but still we hit a couple. Visibility was horrendous, if a truck came the other way we would just pull off the road and let it by then let the dust settle. We would stay back from Trevor enough to keep us out of their dust but still people would overtake, absolute nut cases because there is no way they could see what was coming because of the dust we were creating.

We had to stop for cattle crossing, wild horses, Donkeys and the odd Kangaroo. Actually we were surprised at how few Kangaroos we saw, years ago you would see hundreds of them along the outback roads. First fuel stop was the Mainoru store, out here you fuel up at every opportunity and bonus nice coffee available. As we continued there were ant hills everywhere first of all Magnetic ant hills way back off the road then right next to the road were the cathedral ant hills, some were huge.

The scenery changed from tree lined road to views right out over the bushland. We stopped at a lookout, if we had had the time we would have stopped there for the night it was stunning.

Along the road we saw lots of abandoned vehicles, some upside down and obviously from accidents and some just broken down and left there. The amount of tyres along the road was incredible some were completely shredded, no wonder with the state of some of the road. We just took it easy and watched for the sharp rocks we had so many people pass us. Idiots!

Our next fuel stop was at the settlement of Bulman we had a phone signal there so took the opportunity to phone Joy and wish her a happy birthday, it was her 70th. We had brought balloons etc with us to celebrate but it was her and her husband that ended leaving the Gibb river road before us and headed home early. We checked out Wiki camps and found our stop for the night, it was a gravel pit a lovely big open space in the trees all to ourselves. No sooner had we stopped a fire had been lit, the best thing about free camping, the camp fires. We all sat about and reminisced over the days drive we had loved the whole experience and our excitement was obvious, tomorrow we would arrive in Nhulunbuy.